Welcome to the Precise Pangolin edition of Ubuntu Cloud Server, an open source software product that can be used by anyone who wants an easy-to-use method for deploying the Ubuntu Linux operating system in the cloud.

Now available for the ARM Hard Float platform

Ubuntu Cloud Server 12.04 LTS was officially announced by Canonical on April 26, 2012 and it's the first ever LTS (Long Term Support) release of this project, supported with security patches and software updates until April 2017.

It is available for download as cloud images for Amazon EC2, QCOW2 disk images for the KVM and QEMU virtualization technologies, OVF (Open Virtualization Format) files, as well as root filesystems. Supported architectures include 64-bit, 32-bit and ARM Hard Float, which replaces the ARMEL platform.

In addition to the above, Canonical also provides ready-to-use images for the Amazon EC2 cloud platform, designed to allow the user to launch Ubuntu Cloud Server without downloading anything.

Getting Started with Ubuntu Cloud Server

As you can see, there a many ways to deploy the Ubuntu Cloud Server project. For example, you can install it on an existing cloud system, install it from packages, install it using the MAAS and Juju tools, or use the Live CD ISO image to run a single node (for demonstration purposes only).

Additionally, the product can be used in the public cloud, designed to support Windows Azure, Amazon Web Services, HP Cloud, IMB or Joyent. More details about existing methods on how to install or deploy the Ubuntu Cloud Infrastructure can be found at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuCloudInfrastructure.

Bottom line

All in all, Ubuntu Cloud Server 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) is the incontestable proof that this product reached maturity and can be considered very stable. It is powered by Ubuntu OpenStack and will be supported until April 2017.

Ubuntu Cloud Server was reviewed by Marius Nestor, last updated on May 29th, 2014